Man Among Men
by Darkened Shadows
Summary: Companion piece to Baby Girl. You don't have to have read it to read this but I think they present a fuller picture if you read both. The night of the failed wedding, Nodoka talks to her son about where he will go from here.


**Disclaimer: Ramna 1/2 and all characters therein belong to Rumiko Takahashi.**

**Author's Note: This is an idea posited by Broken Quill & Scattered Ink, a companion piece to Baby Girl. Slightly shorter than the other but I kind of like how it came out. I hope everyone enjoys it. (Note to my readers: The next chapter to When Love Isn't Enough should be finished soon.**

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Nodoka slid her hand along the walls of the Tendo home, thinking deeper thoughts than her bland expression would betray. She had spent many years on her own, existing on the maternal movements of her daily life and supported by the exorbitant wealth of her ancestors. As her wrapped katana would tend to suggest, she came from a well-bred samurai clan. However, while she was as trained as one would think, she was still a woman and Japanese women should not make their strength known.

But she knew that time was changing that fact. It was no longer dishonorable to be a woman in battle. It wasn't dishonorable to act on your emotions or to fail utterly at all the womanly arts that long-standing culture had often required the female sex to abide by. The thing was, she had known this for a long time. Her best friend in the entire world, Kimiko Tendo nee Yakamoto, had been the picture of a Japanese feminist. More than she could ever know, Akane was her mother, heart, body and soul.

So, her deep heart-wrenching tears had had a large effect on Nodoka. She had only heard Kimiko cry like that twice in her entire life. The first time had been the one and only time she allowed her heart to be broken, the effect of being in a courtship with a man who had not been as gentle with her feelings as Soun was. The second time had been shortly before her death, when Kimiko had been utterly devastated at leaving her daughters behind to fend for themselves.

It was supposed to be her duty as a friend of the family to care for them after Kimiko's passing. In fact, she had been planning to do just that, living with the Tendos if she had to in order to ensure an easy transition during their loss. But… she had failed, utterly and completely. Every time she looked at Akane, whose dark black hair and determined eyes that were somehow full of wonder at the same time, she couldn't help but think of her son, her son that even by that point in time she hadn't seen in years.

She had lost count of how many times she had cursed her husband while crying tears of loss into her futon.

Now, Nodoka thought as she trailed out to the dojo, her son had returned to her. Despite being cursed with literal femininity, he was her "man among men". He was everything his father wasn't: respectful and kind and full of love. It was true that his outer façade hid those very characteristics from view but she was his mother – she could tell what kind of man he was.

"Ranma?" she called out as she stepped into the dojo.

She had avoided witnessing the damage while Kasumi, the uncontested woman of the house, cleaned what she could. Now, Nodoka was faced with the full effects of her son's predicament. The dojo, while still standing, was utterly destroyed. The dark marks of explosions littered the walls and floor while some chunks of the walls were missing altogether. Because of the damage, the roof drooped slightly, likely because it was missing some required support, but it didn't seem like it would fall any further.

In the middle of all this sat her son, back in his normal attire and glancing around himself as if he was trying to memorize every mark and every crack. He stilled immediately at the sound of her voice and tilted his head to cast his gaze in her direction. His blue eyes were stormy with guilt and deep, deep thoughts and if she could, she would take all that pain into herself so he wouldn't have to feel it. But that was part of growing up, wasn't it? The pain…

"Mom, what are you doing out here?"

Nodoka opened her mouth and then paused. She was so used to just saying what was on her mind because she had spent over a decade of maternal nothingness filling up the cracks that missing her husband and only child left behind. However, she couldn't tell Ranma that she couldn't stand to hear Akane cry any longer. "I was worried about you." That was as truthful as she was going to get on that front.

Ranma gazed around him again and she could almost see how every piece of damage was almost like a physical blow to him. His cringe was immediately apparent when he focused on a particular burn mark. After a thoughtful moment, Nodoka realized it was the site of the first explosive okonomiyaki, the one that almost hit Akane dead on. "This is my fault."

Nodoka didn't say anything, afraid that if she spoke that she would agree with him. That the fiancée crisis was indeed worsened by whatever tactics he had used thus far was not something he necessarily needed to hear. So, instead of speaking, she sat down demurely near him, arranging her body in proper lines and her face in the most open expression she could manage.

"I love Akane," he murmured after a long moment. "Maybe more than I should."

Nodoka brightened immediately, despite the dark tone of his voice. "That's good." Then she paused, the full situation trying to register on her mind even though she knew she didn't have all the pieces. "Isn't it?"

Ranma surged upward, his body holding an emotion so strong that merely sitting could no longer contain it. "No, Mom. It's not. Look around! Look at the dojo!" His arm swept wide, including every instance of damage that could be seen. "This is what I bring to her life – malice and destruction and—and death!"

Nodoka stood as well, placing a gentle hand on her son's shoulder. "Calm yourself. It is only a dojo, it can be repaired."

The young martial artist sighed, his rage and guilt tamping down to manageable levels again. "You don't get it, Mom. The dojo _is_ Akane. Whenever nothing makes sense, she comes here. Out of all the Tendos, she's the most skilled in the Art. This dojo is her territory and they… they ripped it apart." His voice was quiet, subdued under the force of the emotions that broiled under the surface.

The older woman sighed and led them both back to a seated position. "Okay, let's go through this one thing at a time. You love Akane?"

Ranma nodded once, his gaze tilted away from his mother. "Too much," he commented.

"Why do you say that?"

When he looked at her again, his eyes were full of pain, the pain of loss so deep that Nodoka could only feel her insides tremble in response. He blinked and flicked his eyes to the general direction of his fiancée's bedroom, the darkness slowly leeching out of his eyes. "I thought she died," he started. At her curious expression, he elaborated. "In China. She shouldn't have been there and I was having a hard time with Saffron. She saved me – she always saves me, even if she might not survive it. So, I thought she died." Suddenly, he bowed his head, raising his hands to cover his face. Nodoka understood the action instantly, knowing herself well enough that she had done the very same thing before in order to hold tears at bay. "If she's not here, nothing I do matters."

Nodoka smiled gently, reaching out with one hand to nudge at Ranma's chin. Almost instantly, he looked up at her, a tear leaking out of each eye. He sniffed as softly as he could manage but didn't look away. "It looks like you made your choice, Ranma. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

He blinked rapidly, taken slightly aback by her straightforwardness. However, it didn't take very long for that familiar determination to color his bright blue eyes. "Whatever I have to," he told her in a low voice.


End file.
